Persona Review: Tycho from Penny Arcade (1)
Tycho’s posting style is a little more educated than what you’d expect out of a gaming blog. When you think of “video games” you don’t think of a very wide vocabulary. In fact, I bet you didn’t think of a vocabulary at all. When you read the words “video games” you thought of a video game console, a tv, and people sitting around playing said console. Where does talking factor into that? I mean, if you did think of talking, it probably didn’t go farther than quick quips such as “pwned!” or “the ladder! the LADDER! HE’S ON THE FREAKING LADDER!” (followed by someone getting shot, dying, then yelling and complaining about it to their teammates and partners over the mic) All in all, pretty generic and unsubstantial stuff. Tycho, however, is quite a bit more wordy than that. And articulate.
Take this post, for example. It has to do with Devil May Cry 4’s insane load time on the 360 the first time you pop it in. To quote Tycho:
We crafted a comic on the subject, more out of a sense of civic duty than of any genuine feelings of betrayal. This is precisely the sort of thing that gets hauled out to show the 360 in a bad light, but until I pick the game up at lunch I couldn’t say if pulling the game off the DVD is actually onerous. For me, the graphical tearing of the 360 version (put forward by this 1up preview) is more dire. I’ll buy both versions when I head out later today.
His diction is precise. Words like “crafted,” “civic duty,” and “onerous” paint a detailed and fluid picture. I say fluid because his prose is very clear and followable. Look at the first three paragraphs of the post, for example. United by a common topic as they are, they still roll into one another. His thought about how capcom thinks complainers “are dumb” jumps straight into his reference to the “black eye” it could leave the company. In all honesty, it seems to me as if his posts are one long train of thought – a rant, almost – but that he’s taken his time to go back and make sure that its a rant that works.
His thoughts, sayings, and feelings, while perhaps separated by topic, are unified by the sense of cohesion his word choice gives it. His tone reinforces this concept – while it jumps between casual and scholarly (the diction giving the scholarly angle, the subject material, background, and our own relation to the topic/blog giving the casual angle), his tone consistently treats the topic at hand with fitting grace (or lack thereof, when its deserved – see his mockery of how “dumb” complainers are). This consistency reinforces his comments and thus proves not only respectable but more appealing and advisory, insofar that as we find his words agreeable we view his thoughts and feelings as correct.
That said, the fluidity of form doesn’t always translate to consistency of ideas. Tycho often titles his post one thing and then halfway through jumps to a completely different topic or subject. His post about his love for the Druid class’ travel form only speaks to that topic in the first paragraph. The entire rest of the posting revolves around a game he’s started playing and how it feels and plays exactly like another game he played a few years ago. To be fair his website is a business and as such he has the right (and responsibility) to talk about the games he’s enjoying (read: semi-promoting) and the merchandise updates to his site. Furthermore, his posts often shift focus - even his most on-topic posts deviate to something else often completely unrelated - so this variety (if not the relative disjunction) of content should be taken with a grain of salt when our discussion turns to consistency. However, this does not entirely break the fluidity of his postings. Often Tycho will find some humorous segue to the next issue-at-hand. Other times the second topic will be tangentially relevant to the first. Some posts even deal with/continue discussions from previous updates (in this case, the firing of game reviewers). In short, Tycho’s mind will meander from one topic to another but his treatment of those topics ensures that we can follow his lead.
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